OmniFocus with OmniGraffle?

[GediWorrier]

Hi y'all. I am just dabbling with OG, trying to decide whether to buy or not. It strikes me (not for the first time) that the Omni folks aren't good at getting their own apps to talk to each other. In this case, it would be cool to have your OF actions arrayed in OG as some kind of diagram, such as a bubble diagram.

Has anyone managed to do this?

GediWorrier.

[whpalmer4]

Everything you need to write an Applescript to spit out your OmniFocus database as an OmniGraffle file is there, except perhaps the motivation :-)

In your vision, what does a sequential project look like in this diagram? What about a folder? And how many objects do you see being an upper bound?

[Pat Gilmour]

[...]it would be cool to have your OF actions arrayed in OG as some kind of diagram, such as a bubble diagram.

Has anyone managed to do this?

GediWorrier.


I really understand this wish but don't know how to fulfill it ;-)

To be organized...

- Some people love Lists (OmniFocus)

- Some people love Mind maps and Diagrams (OmniGraffle)

- And then there are some people, who love both.


I would love to be able to organize my Projects and Lists in OmniFocus then select what interests me to work on and hit the Magic-Transform Button and have them appear in Omnigraffle. I would then turn on Autoformat, choose an attractive Diagram layout and use this to get a big, visual overview of all the tasks I have to do.

I can already sort of do this with OmniOutliner with a simple copy and paste, but OmniFocus - the GTD tool par excellence does not let me do this.

Is there a way to do this that is simple enough that it would require only, say, two clicks? I've tried the OmniFocus export options but haven't found one that will open in OmniGraffle.

Thanks for any thoughts.

[Pat Gilmour]

[bump] :-)

[RobTrew]

For the moment, I would tend to start with this script (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=25965) which generates OPML , iThoughtsHD or FoldingText files of all or part of your OmniFocus data.

There's an article here on one way of using it:
Visualize OmniFocus As iThoughts Map, OPML, Or Plain Text (http://www.macstories.net/tutorials/visualize-omnifocus-as-ithoughts-map-opml-or-plain-text/)

For diagramming in OmniGraffle, two routes come to mind:

OPML > OmniOutliner3 > OmniGraffle
The script above (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=25965) to > FoldingText > OmniGraffle


The FoldingText > OmniGraffle visualisation route is provided by another script (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?p=115554).

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[Pat Gilmour]

Thanks for the reply. Quite a lot of info to digest so I'll look over the w/end.

Already, OF to Tree is great - hadn't encountered Tree before.

But yeah, getting to OG is the goal and the options look good, so many thanks RobTrew!

[Lizard]

One way to learn how to write AppleScript for OmniGraffle is...

1) Create the sort of object you want to make in OmniGraffle -- a green rectangle with the label "Count my chickens", perhaps.

2) Right-click on the shape and select "Copy As > AppleScript"

3) Paste it into AppleScript Editor. Voila!

tell application "OmniGraffle"
tell canvas of front window
make new shape at end of graphics with properties {size: {222.000000, 110.000000}, text: {text: "Count my chickens", size: 18, alignment: center, color: {1.000000, 1.000000, 1.000000}, text: "Count my chickens"}, origin: {78.000000, 136.000000}, fill color: {0.000000, 0.501961, 0.250980}}
end tell
end tell

[Pat Gilmour]

Nice. Very cool. Thanks!

[RobTrew]

Paste it into AppleScript Editor. Voila!

Well … up to a point …

There is a long-standing bug which means that this technique generates code which (on OG Professional at least) won't in fact compile and run without modification.

What I get is:
tell application "OmniGraffle Professional"
…
end tell

and this leads to a slow error message and a dialog which invites a search for the unknown application.

For the code to actually run you have to make a manual edit to something like:
tell application "OmniGraffle Professional 5"
…
end tell

or, less verbosely and perhaps more durably:

tell application id "OGfl"
…
end tell

[RobTrew]

Well … up to a point …

There is a long-standing bug which means that this technique generates code which (on OG Professional at least) won't in fact compile and run without modification.



Seem to remember logging this two and a half years ago (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=15962) :-)

Et bien, voilà …

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